Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to the media after viewing the weapons cache discovered at a factory in the West Bank city of Hebron, Jan. 10, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel has approved plans for another 3,000 new homes in the West Bank.

The approvals by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman were announced Tuesday, ahead of the evacuation of the Amona outpost, and are seen as an effort to placate the government’s harder right wing and settlers angry over the evacuation. [Read more…]

(JTA) – Police and security officers began evacuating homes in the West Bank outpost of Amona.

Hundreds of police entered Amona on Wednesday morning in order to carry out the court-ordered evacuation. They were met by hundreds of activists, many teens, who have stationed themselves in homes and the outpost’s synagogue. Some threw stones at police as they entered the area. [Read more…]

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – The Netherlands government allocated more than $8.5 million US to the ongoing establishment of a Holocaust museum in Amsterdam and a commemorative wall for victims.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte last week announced the funding – one of the largest expenditures ever undertaken in the Netherlands on Holocaust commemoration – of the museum to the tune of about $6 million and the remaining about $2.5 million for a wall bearing the names of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews murder in the Holocaust. [Read more…]

A view of the interior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located south of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2010. (Wikimedia Commons)

(JTA) – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum called on the U.S. government to create policy that addresses national security concerns but also allows in “legitimate refugees.”

The statement issued Tuesday night does not directly address U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order suspending entry of all refugees to the United States for the next four months, and barring Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. for an indefinite period, but clearly is a response to it. The museum rarely comments on government actions. [Read more…]

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – The Dutch main public broadcaster apologized to supporters of a local soccer team for omitting context from reports on the singing of anti-Semitic chants by some fans of the team.

The unusual apology earlier this month by NOS was over its coverage of the Jan. 14 match game in Utrecht between the FC Utrecht team and the Ajax club from Amsterdam that included chants of “The Jews are going to the slaughter” and “whoever doesn’t jump is a Jew.” [Read more…]

MUNICH (JTA) – A Jewish teenager has been kicked out of a vocational school in Germany for allegedly raising his arm in the Hitler salute in the classroom.

But Maksym M., 18, insists he was just raising his hand when attendance was taken at the Blindow-Schule in Leipzig, according to the Bild newspaper, which also reported that he has been doing well in the program. The state prosecutor declined to bring charges against him. [Read more…]